More Anti Smoking Guff. The Science Is Now Settled.

Where have I heard that before?

I blogged last week about a council putting up No Smoking signs in childrens play areas.

Now, Nick Nunn writes for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph about his desire to have smoking banned in all outdoor places.

Ban smoking in outdoor public places too

THE moaners and groaners have been predictably quick to react to Pendle council’s decision to put ‘No Smoking’ signs in all 57 of the borough’s outdoor play areas and skate parks.
Absurd phrases like ‘health fascists’ have been bandied about along with the weary argument that to tell someone not to pollute others with his or her filthy addiction is an interference with some sort of fundamental human right.

First he bemoans the use of the term "health fascist", then he infers that all smokers want to do is intentionally harm others and claim this as a right. He also calls us filthy. I think "Apt" is the word he's looking for, not "Absurd".

Smokers are not defending their right to "pollute others". We don't go around looking for non smokers that we can blow the contents of our lungs at, just for a good laugh. The right we are defending is the right to engage in a legal activity as consenting adults. Sometimes in the company of other consenting adults.

To deny such a right and call us filthy should not be mistaken for health fascism.

You’d think there’s a clause in the Magna Carta or the US constitution assigning everyone the right to light up and blow bronchitis-inducing smoke in people’s faces whenever and wherever they wish.

Is this really what you believe smokers want to do? I would defy this chap to quote a time when a smoker has walked up to him and blew smoke in his face. I would also invite him to prove that this action, if done, would induce bronchitis. It may be rude but not lethal.

However, to make up lies is not health fascism.

It’s true that there are thankfully now a lot of places where smoking is rightly banned and a lot more where it should be.
Banning smoking in pubs was a very sensible move but am I alone in objecting to having to pass through a wall of tobacco smoke every time I walk past a town centre pub outside which large numbers of people are standing on the pavement puffing?

Now you see the problem here, don't you? People like you put us out on the street. You couldn't compromise. You couldn't allow smoking and non smoking pubs. You had to ban smoking in every pub and club across the country, even if it meant their going out of business and putting their staff out of work. Just in case a smoker at sometime, might want to enter a pub, every last one of them has to be non smoking, regardless of the wishes of the owner.

But of course, that is not Health Fascism.

Sadly Pendle council’s notices won’t actually have the force of law behind them and rely on goodwill and common sense.
Unfortunately you can’t bank on that.
Just look at the number of people who let dogs roam through children’s play areas in our parks and leave evidence of their visits behind – something else which is proven to be potentially dangerous to youngsters’ health.
Smoking should be banned in all public places outdoors and indoors.

Smoking in the open air can have no possible harmful effects. Those with common sense would ignore the signs because they are useless and unnecessary.

This chap thinks heavily diluted cigarette smoke in the atmosphere is as dangerous as dog turds.  Canine poop can be harmful if handled by children and you know what they're like for picking stuff up. Dog shit contains E. Coli and other harmful bacteria including fecal coliform bacteria, which causes serious kidney disorders, intestinal illness, cramps and diarrhea in humans. (There are 23 million fecal coliform bacteria in a single gram of pet waste!) It also often contains roundworm larvae, which cause blindness.


To him, outdoor ETS is just as harmful, but that isn't health fascism.

If people insist on doing it then they should be forced to use places where there is no risk of non-smokers being contaminated.

Like outside?

The health risks of smoking and passive smoking are no longer open to sensible argument.

Here it is. The science is now settled.
For people like this, the science becomes settled, the minute it can no longer be defended in rational debate.
The science certainly is open to sensible argument. You only have to spend a few minutes with Dick P or Leg-Iron or many others who I don't have time to link to because there are so many, to see how flawed the anti smoking science is, and to find out how much science goes unreported because it doesn't agree with the doctrine.

But to cease the debate and dismiss the deniers, that's not health fascism.

Anyone who tries to deny them belongs with that dwindling group of people who still believe the earth is flat.

There are a group of people that believe the the Earth is flat. They are clearly insane (although I get the impression they may be pulling our plonkers).

But comparing smokers to raving loonies can't possibly be thought of as health fascism.

Pendle council should send staff to the play areas to make polite requests to all the mums and dads who will predictably ignore the signs.
Embarrassment may not work of course but it is worth a try.

And who will pay for these jobsworths? So you imagine that people will actually ignore the signs. Me too. My answer would be not to put them there and stop being such interfering busybodies. Your answer is to spend taxpayers money, when the country is skint, to employ an army of jobsworths to intimidate people.

But not in a health fascist kind of a way.

It will also mean speaking to the worrying number of teenagers who are still picking up the habit even though these days cigarettes can’t be all that much cheaper than heroin.

Comparing tobacco to hard drugs isn't.........oh, you know where I'm going with this.

If all this sounds a bit self-righteous I do have a confession to make.
I smoked continuously from the age of 14 until I gave up more than 20 years ago when my GP quite bluntly told me I could expect to get chest infections every winter in escalating seriousness and was literally knocking decades off my life expectancy.
He also mentioned the effect my smoking was bound to have on my own children.
At home I have a copy of an ancient cine film taken by my dad which shows me leaning over my baby daughter changing her nappy – with a lighted cigarette in my mouth about nine inches from her face.
It was a different time, an age of ignorance, but I shudder every time I recall that scene.

So you lived in an age of ignorance but now you know better. I have no problem with education. By all means tell people about the issues surrounding tobacco consumption, but don't try to dictate their actions for them.

We must use every weapon available to educate and eradicate such harmful habits.

Read that one a couple of times and let it sink in.

We must use every weapon available to educate and eradicate such harmful habits.

We must use every weapon available to educate and eradicate such harmful habits.

This is not health fascism? This is the worst kind of health fascism Mr Nunn. I suggest you go here and do a little research.

For now:

We must use every weapon available to educate and eradicate such harmful people.